


When The End, Then Start

by project_break



Category: U-KISS
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-07
Updated: 2014-08-07
Packaged: 2018-02-12 03:20:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2093757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/project_break/pseuds/project_break
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they meet again, it's at a wedding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When The End, Then Start

He took a taxi from the airport straight to his hotel. He dropped his bags off in his room and then went down to the bar. He ordered a whiskey and coke. And then he ordered a second. Someone sat down on the stool beside him.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” Eli said. 

AJ took a sip of his drink. “So did I.”

 

The wedding was in a big, white church within view of the sea. They arrived late. AJ got out of the car and watched tiny, distant waves break against tiny, distant rocks as Eli found a place to park. There was the soft crunch of gravel underfoot as Eli came to join him.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“No,” AJ replied. 

“Are you sure you want to go in? You can take the car back and I’ll just grab a ride into town with someone else.”

“I have to see it,” AJ said. “We’re late. Let’s go.”

The church was nearly full. They stood at the back and looked around. The front was empty; the wedding party had still not arrived. 

“Look.” Eli tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the second pew from the front on the bride’s side. “I think there’s just enough room for us there.”

AJ nodded. Eli was looking at him hesitantly again. 

“Are you okay with being that close? Do you want to just stand back here?”

“No. Let’s sit there.” AJ walked to the pew and sat down. Eli followed him. A lady with a sleeping baby was sitting beside AJ. He didn’t look at her. He didn’t try to talk.

The wedding party came in.

The bridesmaids lined up, all of them smiling prettily. The groomsmen lined up, grinning and elbowing each other. And the groom stood in front of the crowd, beaming, looking for the entire world like he had never been happier than he was in that moment. He started to glance around the room, and then the clock struck the hour and the wedding march began. 

AJ stood up and felt Eli’s hand on his arm, steadying him. He tried to feel nothing, but instead he felt sick.

The bride was beautiful in her silky, white dress, her hair long and dark under the veil that fell over her face. AJ could hardly spare a glance for her, trapped by the sight of the groom’s eyes sparkling as she walked up the aisle toward him. When everyone sat down again, AJ felt like gravity was trying to pull him through the floor.

“Dearly beloved…” 

The groom had eyes for no one but the bride, his gaze locked on her face like there was no one else in the room. _And that’s how it should be,_ AJ reminded himself. They were getting married, after all. The bride and the groom. They should want to look at no one but each other.

The baby woke up and gave a small wail. The groom glanced over to see what the cause of the noise was, and he saw AJ. He froze.

AJ locked eyes with him. _Kevin._

Kevin. Kevin, who was gorgeous beyond belief in his dark suit, his blond hair neat and brushed sleek behind his ears. Kevin, whose cheeks had gone pale and whose pink lips were parted on a breath of shock, in whose eyes something had shifted so intricately that AJ knew only four people in the whole church could tell what he was feeling.

“Oh, fuck,” Eli breathed beside him.

Oh God. AJ thought, his stomach dropping. _Oh no. Oh, God no. Not now._

_He loves me._

 

Kevin couldn’t think. He couldn’t feel anything. He was numb, he was stupid. He was unable to look away. AJ. What was AJ doing there? He wasn’t supposed to—he had sent back the card saying he couldn’t make it. He was supposed to still be in New York. He wasn’t supposed to be… he wasn’t…

AJ was staring at him, eyes wide and dark, and Kevin could see everything. There was pain there, deep, and a sadness that was so close to overwhelming that Kevin felt tears building, but most of all there was love. Love, which Kevin had once been so used to seeing in those eyes, smiling at him and showering him with affection. Now it was cracked, bleeding at the edges, but it was still there. AJ had never given up on him. Not once. Not even now. Not even at Kevin’s wedding. AJ was still there and he still cared and he wasn’t supposed to be there, he was…

 _I love him._ The thought came to him, totally unbidden. No. No, no. This couldn’t happen. Not now. He was getting married. He was getting married to his fiancée and she was nice and pretty and his mother adored her and she wasn’t AJ. She wasn’t AJ. She wasn’t. No. No, no, no, no. 

Kevin could feel himself panicking. He couldn’t look away. 

“Kevin?” 

AJ looked so lost.

“Kevin?”

The same man who used to grab him around the waist after practice and tickle him. The same man who kissed his cheeks to make him blush. The same man who told whole nations that he loved him on national radio. The same man who had told Kevin he would wait on his call and then left for New York with Kevin heading for California.

“Kevin? Are you okay?” A soft touch against his hand, and he dragged his eyes away from AJ’s face to find his fiancée’s gentle fingers against his palm. 

“Sorry. Yeah.” He smiled for the congregation. He smiled for the minister when he read their vows, and he smiled for his fiancée as she said _I do._

Inside, he felt his heart was breaking.

 

It wasn’t fair. Not at all. It was cruel and pointless. AJ shouldn’t have come. 

Why? Why now? Why did Kevin have to be in love with him on his wedding day? Why did Kevin have to look at him like that – the way he used to crave, the way he used to adore, the way he’d always wished to see again – just as Kevin was making sure that it would never be able to matter to either of them?

AJ shouldn’t have come. He knew Kevin had sent him an invitation just to be polite, because people would ask if he invited the rest of U-KISS and not AJ. And AJ hadn’t been going to come. Up until three days ago, when he threw three changes of clothes into a suitcase and took the train to the JFK, he had been resigned to never seeing Kevin again. And then something in him snapped. He had felt that he had to see him; he had to see Kevin one last time and watch as everything AJ had wanted with him disappeared. It couldn’t be real unless he witnessed it for himself.

But it wasn’t real. It wasn’t fucking real. Kevin was standing there, marrying a pretty little girl his mother approved of while he loved AJ, and AJ was left to sit in the audience and watch as all the things he had never known they might have had were dashed.

Kevin’s fiancée said something and he looked back to her and smiled. It was that brittle, fake smile that AJ always hated seeing on him, although he’d been the cause of it more than once. The minister read their vows, and the fiancée said, “I do.” And then the minister turned to Kevin.

Eli reached out, and his hand touched AJ’s shoulder.

“Let’s leave,” he said. “You don’t want to watch this, man.”

“I can’t.” Leaving the church meant leaving Kevin and he couldn’t do that. He’d come this far, so it was time to see Kevin taken away from him forever. He had always prided himself on being stubborn where Kevin was concerned, and that wasn’t going to end until it had to. Until Kevin forced it to.

“…until death do you part?” The final blow. It seemed the world had entered slow motion. He waited lifetimes to hear it, to watch Kevin’s mouth move and end everything with a new start.

Kevin looked at AJ. He looked right at him with dark, terrified eyes that told AJ he was about to make the bigger mistake of his life. AJ’s heart hurt, his chest was tight. He swore he wouldn’t cry, but he felt tears rise as high as they could without spilling.

“What is he doing?” Eli muttered under his breath.

And then Kevin spoke.

 

He looked over to AJ one last time. He wanted to see him before it was too late. He couldn’t help it. He should be saying _I do,_ but instead…

When Kevin looked at AJ, he saw everything. He saw the past, he saw his unsteady present, he saw a future with another wedding, an apartment in New York, a dog. He saw himself curled up on his bed in his mother’s house in Seoul, crying into a pillow, he saw AJ bothering him for a kiss on stage. He saw his mother crying, and screaming and asking him why, he saw some of his friends leave him behind, but most of them stay. But most of all, he saw AJ. AJ, who loved him and now, for the second time in all the years Kevin had known him, was stepping back to let Kevin determine their futures.

“I can’t.” Kevin whispered, feeling his voice crack and watching his fiancée’s eyes go wide behind her veil. “I’m sorry. I can’t.” 

And then he turned and ran.

 

“What the—?” Eli said, voicing exactly what everyone else in the church was thinking. Kevin ran down the center aisle of the church and pushed through the doors, outside and out of view.

AJ just sat there. Stunned. Kevin had run out on his own wedding? Kevin left his bride at the altar. And AJ…

“Dude.” Eli elbowed him in the side and AJ nearly kicked him out of a reflex honed from years of being woken up by him in dressing rooms and cars and hotels. “Are you just going to sit there?”

“What?” AJ still hadn’t moved past the part where Kevin had left the altar. Kevin had just run out of his own wedding. Kevin’s fiancée – ex-fiancée? – was ruining her eye makeup in front of two hundred people because Kevin had just left. Had said, _I can’t._ And then left. Gone. Just—

“Kevin just ditched this because of you, asshole. Go get him.” Eli stood up and tugged on his arm.

“What?” AJ snapped back into it. What was Eli saying?

“Jaeseop. Fuck’s sake. He just ran out of his wedding for you. Go find him.”

Oh.

_Oh._

_Kevin left because of_ **me**.  
  
AJ ran out so fast that he nearly clipped the door.

 

Kevin leaned against the back of the church, face in his hands and not even trying to hold back tears. He couldn’t stop them – it was a torrent. 

He felt awful. He felt worse than awful. He felt nasty and mean and horrible. He had betrayed his fiancée; he had betrayed his family and hers, their friends. Guilt swept through him. He had done something horrible, but he couldn’t have gone through with it. He’d realized that as he was standing there at the altar. If AJ wanted him, there could never be anybody else. It would be worse for himself and his would-be wife if he had gone through with it, knowing that AJ still loved him. AJ…

“Kevin?”

Kevin looked up, and there he was. AJ, standing in front of him, anxiety staining the air around him, drenched through with longing. 

They moved at the same time.

Instead of stemming the flow of tears, the feeling of AJ’s arms around him – his own hands gripping tight to the fine material of AJ’s suit jacket – made Kevin sob harder. He could feel AJ’s breath hitching as well, his chest shuddering. 

“I missed you,” Kevin whispered through tears when he found enough air in his lungs to speak. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Kevin pressed his face against AJ’s shoulder, breathing him in, wrapping his arms tighter around AJ’s back. He never wanted to let him go. He could barely conceive of AJ ever being further away than he was.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” he said. It was a stupid thing to say, but he didn’t know what else he _could_ say. They both knew what had happened in the church.

“You know I’ve never been able to resist you.” One of AJ’s hands was touching Kevin’s hair, fingers combing through the gel and hairspray which had held it in place all day, making it soft again. 

“I haven’t seen you in years,” Kevin reminded him softly, unsure of why he was doing so. What was the point in making it worse? He could hear his mother yelling in the background, the woman he was supposed to marry crying, and other voices – Soohyun’s and Eli’s among them – trying to calm them down.

“I know.” The hand that wasn’t touching Kevin’s hair was curved around his waist now, and God, if Kevin had ever forgotten how large AJ’s hands were, how comforting they could be, he was getting a solid reminder. But AJ _was_ different, in some ways. He wasn’t trying to explain himself; he wasn’t trying to make excuses. He wasn’t acting like he had to have an answer for everything. He was different from the man Kevin had worked with for so many years, the man he had fallen in love with, but he was still AJ. He was still the guy who couldn’t leave Kevin alone when it counted the most.

“I missed you,” Kevin said again. It was all he could think to say. Everything else was gone from his mind. Just two sentences, _I missed you_ , and _I l—_

“I love you.”

 

AJ felt Kevin tense against him, but he couldn’t regret it. He had to say it, and he knew Kevin had to hear it. It was an acknowledgement of what had happened inside the church. It was a reminder of mistakes that had been made, and a promise. For him, it recalled the striking pain he had felt when he had seen it in Kevin’s eyes earlier, proof that he had been wrong when he let Kevin go all those years ago – proof that all those years of loving him had been worth something, and it was about to be wasted. Now, with Kevin in his arms, AJ couldn’t allow the precious moment to let him know go by.

Kevin shifted and AJ forced himself to remain calm. He knew that Kevin knew he loved him, but he didn’t know how he would react to being confronted with it in words. But then Kevin was looking at him, leaning back, but not away. AJ’s fingers were still tangled in his hair, and his hand still around Kevin’s waist.

AJ saw him. Finally those eyes he loved looked at him and only him, a little guilt-ridden but not afraid. Kevin licked his lips, and AJ’s stomach flipped. All the time that had passed, still the same Kevin. AJ let his hand slide down to cup Kevin’s neck, and then they were moving close, Kevin’s eyes falling shut and…

 

They had only ever dreamed about kissing each other. More than once, Kevin had imagined AJ taking it further than usual at work, kissing him for a joke and then not stopping. AJ had day dreamed about sharing a hotel room with him, eating takeaway on the same bed and just falling into it, that naturally. Neither of them had ever thought about kissing against a church that played host to a ruined wedding, not when Kevin was down on one knee and not when AJ had seen the invitation in his mailbox.

And neither of them had ever thought it would be like this.

Kevin gasped when their lips touched, and AJ dragged him closer. The first kiss was short, almost a sharp shock, and then, the barrier breached, they flooded through. 

It was a painful kind of happiness, a thrill that was underwritten by guilt and regret. Regret, for the time that had been wasted, and guilt for the people hurt in the process. But it was happiness nonetheless.

AJ kissed Kevin in a way he never would have without the years of silence that had passed between them. AJ kissed him for the boy he had been when he fell in love, the man he had grown into while he waited for Kevin to love him back, for the friend who finally decided that love couldn’t be won through force and watched Kevin put space between them, and for the ex-coworker who spent years of silence hoping for a hand to be extended his way and seeing nothing until a wedding invitation rested tauntingly in his mailbox.

And Kevin kissed AJ for the boy who had been charmed by AJ immediately, the man who melted under affection but never told, for the friend who had been stupid enough to think that absence made the heart less fond, and for the ex-coworker who had tried to find a substitute while his heart screamed to lead his hand toward a phone and a call and a reconciliation.

How could anything be tentative after all that? Their kisses were gentle, but deep. Long, both of them unwilling to pull apart even for air. Kevin wrapped his arms around AJ’s neck and tugged him down, and AJ’s fingers pushed into the soft hair behind Kevin’s ear, his other hand firm on the center of Kevin’s back. They tuned the world out. They could hear, see, think of nothing but each other and the planet could have turned twice in the time they spent in each other’s arms. 

“I love you,” Kevin whispered, and as AJ held him the light faded out of the sea.


End file.
